How omniscient is God?

[Charlemagne_III]

“Nothing” does not and cannot exist as an entity. So the question you presented is not a legitimate question. All we can say is that the universe exists. Modern physics explains that space, time, causation are only defined within the universe. So the questions like “what exists outside the universe, or what existed before the universe, or what caused the universe” are all nonsensical, irrational, illegitimate questions. Any apologist who does not understand that is not worthy to listen to.

I dare you to find a statement from the modern scientific community that modern physics has proven there is no reality beyond the universe we know, or that it is irrational and nonsensical to believe same. You might find an occasional Richard Dawkins (who can’t think his way out of a paper bag) who will agree with you. Go have a cup of coffee with him and commiserate.

Such a question as what realities might exist other than the universe has to be handled under the authority of metaphysics, not physics. If you insist to the contrary, you are a victim of scientism and not worthy to be listened to.

 

[Solmyr]

Well, good for you for getting it right (that’s close to my definition), but we still have to deal with those who don’t get something that simple. (Namely Krauss, who seems to be mildly confused about what nothing means). So don’t fault my side if your side happens to be full of people who can’t grasp the definition of nothing properly.

I only speak for myself.

That doesn’t mean something has to exist. Just because I can’t have “0” dollars properly speaking doesn’t mean I must have at least one dollar.

To have zero dollars is not a logical problem.

So far as we can tell, our universe is not required to be the way it is. It could conceivably be quite different. This means it cannot be the final cause, because whatever that is, it must be absolute and unchangeable, i.e. could not be otherwise, must be by itself.

There is no “final” cause, and there is no need to postulate one. The concept that the universe simply IS would be sufficient. The PSR (principle of sufficient reason) is not absolute. Any explanation is a reduction of something to something even more fundamental. But this “descent” cannot be infinite, there MUST be something for what there is no explanation (and cannot be an explanation) and that is a brute fact.

Yes, I agree that space and time did not exist. From William Lane Craig:

"Notice that there’s simply nothing prior to the initial boundary of space-time. Let’s not be misled by words. When cosmologists say, “There is nothing prior to the initial boundary,” they do not mean that there is some state of affairs prior to it, and that is a state of nothingness. That would be to treat nothing as though it were something! Rather they mean that at the boundary point, it is false that “There is something prior to this point.”

That is well said.

Causality is another question, mostly because some versions of causality proposed by philosophers aren’t at all like the causality we normally think of (i.e. Physical interaction).

Proposed? What did they propose? And what kind of argument could they present for it? The “it could have been different” is not an argument.

Something certainly seems to have caused the universe, primarily on the basis that the universe is not, as I said, an explanation for itself. The universe could have many different laws – yet it does not. It doesn’t have to have matter (or perhaps even space-time), but it does. It is not its own explanation, and therefore seems to require something else to explain it. I would recommend reading Craig. He agrees with much of what you’ve just said, by the way.

To say that the universe “could” be different is just empty speculation. To our best knowledge the “final” building blocks are the quarks with very specific characteristics. There is no reason to assume that they “could” be different.

As I said, the explanations cannot descend into infinity. Therefore there is always a brute fact, which is “unexplained” and which requires no explanation. The believers postulate God as this “brute fact”, the materialists propose the universe. But God’s existence cannot be demonstrated, while the universe is there for everyone to see, discover and explore. As such to postulate the universe as a “null-hypothesis” is supported by Occam’s razor. (Of course Occam’s razor proves nothing. it just points to the most parsimonious hypothesis).

 

[FractalFire]

There is no “final” cause, and there is no need to postulate one. The concept that the universe simply IS would be sufficient.

That assertion is completely baseless and unsupported, so I wholehearted reject it.

The PSR (principle of sufficient reason) is not absolute. Any explanation is a reduction of something to something even more fundamental. But this “descent” cannot be infinite, there MUST be something for what there is no explanation (and cannot be an explanation) and that is a brute fact.

Exactly. My explanation is God, because I think it the most reasonable one. Your explanation is the universe, but I don’t think you’ve done a good job defending that concept.

The “it could have been different” is not an argument.

Actually, it is. It’s called the argument from contingency, and has been expounded by thinkers since Aquinas (and maybe before). Here’s Craig again explaining it:

"So what reason might be offered for thinking that premise 1 * is true? Well, when you reflect on it, premise 1 has a sort of self-evidence about it. Imagine that you’re hiking through the woods one day and you come across a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If one of your hiking partners said to you, “It just exists inexplicably. Don’t worry about it!”, you’d either think that he was crazy or figure that he just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the suggestion that the ball existed there with literally no explanation.

Now suppose you increase the size of the ball in this story so that it’s the size of a car. That wouldn’t do anything to satisfy or remove the demand for an explanation. Suppose it were the size of a house. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of a continent or a planet. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of the entire universe. Same problem. Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to affect the need of an explanation."

Read more: reasonablefaith.org/argument-from-contingency#ixzz3yED3fNqK

To say that the universe “could” be different is just empty speculation. To our best knowledge the “final” building blocks are the quarks with very specific characteristics. There is no reason to assume that they “could” be different.

And you know this how? I seriously doubt you are an expert on quarks. To me, it sounds about as crazy as suggesting that atoms could be no different merely because we don’t know a lot about them. In addition to being ridiculous, it is completely at odds with everything else we know. Why should Quarks be any more immutable than atoms? Why can’t there be three charges instead of just two? Why only four fundamental forces? Why only a certain number and type of quarks, leptons, etc.? Why must they bind together instead of flying apart? Why do we even have to have matter/energy? Why not just space/time? What if there were hundreds of different quantum spins and twelve dimensions? Let’s not even start with all the different versions of string theory that could potentially explain our universe. How can you, a non-physicist (I presume) say such a thing. I’m sorry, but “there is no reason to assume” you could be correct.

As I said, the explanations cannot descend into infinity. Therefore there is always a brute fact, which is “unexplained” and which requires no explanation. The believers postulate God as this “brute fact”, the materialists propose the universe. But God’s existence cannot be demonstrated, while the universe is there for everyone to see, discover and explore. As such to postulate the universe as a “null-hypothesis” is supported by Occam’s razor. (Of course Occam’s razor proves nothing. it just points to the most parsimonious hypothesis).

I have explained to you one argument that leads reason to eliminate the universe as the ultimate reality (there are many more; this was one of the most important questions to many thinkers over hundreds of years), and I think it is foolish to continue believing it in in light of modern science. (You do realize that ancient philosophers assumed the universe was eternal and then gave arguments for God, correct? Many of them said it would be immensely easier to prove God’s existence if the universe were shown to have a beginning, but since they were unable to prove this satisfactorily, they were left with other arguments. The fact that the universe is finite has confirmed many Theistic predictions.)

If you want to believe something other than the universe is the absolute nature, posit that and I might listen – but the universe itself? Absolutely not. Reason compels us to choose a different solution. Accepting the first answer given to us by Occam’s Razor is rarely wise.*

 

[FractalFire]

Oh look, I should have read further down, Craig answers your very objection, almost:

The atheist has one alternative open to him at this point. He can retrace his steps, withdraw his objection to premise 1, and say instead that, yes, the universe does have an explanation of its existence. But that explanation is: the universe exists by a necessity of its own nature. For the atheist, the universe could serve as a sort of God-substitute which exists necessarily.

Now this would be a very radical step for the atheist to take, and I can’t think of any contemporary atheist who has in fact adopted this line. A few years ago at a Philosophy of Time conference at City College in Santa Barbara, it seemed to me that Professor Adolf Grünbaum, a vociferous atheistic philosopher of science from the University of Pittsburgh, was flirting with this idea. But when I raised the question from the floor whether he thought the universe existed necessarily, he was quite indignant at the suggestion. “Of course not!” he snapped and went on to say that the universe just exists without any explanation.

The reason atheists are not eager to embrace this alternative is clear. As we look about the universe, none of the things that make it up, whether stars, planets, galaxies, dust, radiation, or what have you, seems to exist necessarily. They could all fail to exist; indeed, at some point in the past, when the universe was very dense, none of them did exist.

But, you might say, what about the matter out of which these things are made? Maybe the matter exists necessarily, and all these things are just different contingent configurations of matter. The problem with this suggestion is that, according to the standard model of subatomic physics, matter itself is composed of tiny particles called “quarks.” The universe is just the collection of all these quarks arranged in different ways. But now the question arises: couldn’t a different collection of quarks have existed instead of this one? Does each and every one of these quarks exist necessarily?

Notice what the atheist cannot say at this point. He cannot say that the quarks are just configurations of matter which could have been different, even though the matter of which the quarks are composed exists necessarily. He can’t say this because quarks aren’t composed of anything! They just are the basic units of matter. So if a quark doesn’t exist, the matter doesn’t exist.

Now it seems obvious that a different collection of quarks could have existed instead of the collection that does exist. But if that were the case, then a different universe would have existed. To see the point, think about your desk. Could your desk have been made of ice? Notice that I’m not asking if you could have had an ice desk in the place of your wooden desk that had the same size and structure. Rather I’m asking if your very desk, the one made of wood, if that desk could have been made of ice. The answer is obviously, no. The ice desk would be a different desk, not the same desk.

Similarly, a universe made up of different quarks, even if identically arranged as in this universe, would be a different universe. It follows, then, that the universe does not exist by a necessity of its own nature.

So atheists have not been so bold as to deny premise 2 and say that the universe exists necessarily. Premise 2 also seems to be plausibly true.

Read more: reasonablefaith.org/argument-from-contingency#ixzz3yEJKI700

 

[Nixbits]

Sorry to drag attention back to post #36, but . . .

e_c:

if your will is perfectly powerful and your intellect is perfectly knowing… which means you know what you are going to do actively or allow to come to pass, as God does. And even on a human level that’s silly to say, unless you are cramming knowledge into a Humean corner that rules out induction entirely.

If God is aware of what is going to happen to me ten days from now, because to God’s awareness my future is part of His ‘now’ in some way, then God cannot have the power to change what will happen to me ten days from now. In other words, His omniscience necessarily limits His power. If God cannot intervene to make or allow to happen something different, then He is not omnipotent, at least to my understanding of that word. The two abilities cannot coexist without limitation.

I confess that I don’t understand the relevance of your reference to Hume’s view of inductive reasoning.

e_c:

Supposing omnipresence was the kind of thing you seem to think it is, all God has to do is will to be in all places. But this is not the kind of thing omnipresence is… here’s where there’s an “inner contradiction,” because there simply can’t be something that exists that God is not present to, since God is the necessary condition of everything’s existence. The mode of His presence is through power, providence, and essence, as I explained above.

If, as you say, “There simply can’t be something that exists that God is not present to.” then His omnipresence necessarily limits His power. God cannot exclude his ‘presence’ from Hell (for example) even if He wanted to. So, again, He is not omnipotent in the way that I understand the term.

Neither do I concede that this is an internal contradiction (like the strength to lift any rock and the ability to make a rock that cannot be lifted). It’s quite possible (in theory) for God to have the power to exclude his presence from a place, but not while simultaneously claiming omnipresence. So it is a contradiction between claimed abilities. Internal contradictions are clearly nonsensical, but conflicts between claimed abilities makes it unclear which ability will give way.

e_c:

God is not an ether. Thomas’ example is that we sometimes speak of kings being in all places in their kingdom - God’s presence perfects this notion due to the perfection of His power.

The relevant part of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica is from section 1.8.3: “A king, for example, is said to be in the whole kingdom by his power, although he is not everywhere present. Again, a thing is said to be by its presence in other things which are subject to its inspection; as things in a house are said to be present to anyone, who nevertheless may not be in substance in every part of the house.”

I freely admit that I’m unfamiliar with any theological sophistication in the definitions of these omni- abilities. But this appears to me to be a figurative omnipresence that is actually omnipotence and omniscience, and not any sort of actual omnipresence at all. To me, using this term without qualification is misleading.

e_c:

It’s right on topic because the three “omnis” are bound up together.

As I’ve described above, I’m not convinced that omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence are possible simultaneously without one ability necessarily putting limitations on the others. This thread, however, relates only to God’s omniscience. Can you explain how the three are bound up together, such that we cannot talk about one without considering the other two?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

If God is aware of what is going to happen to me ten days from now, because to God’s awareness my future is part of His ‘now’ in some way, then God cannot have the power to change what will happen to me ten days from now. In other words, His omniscience necessarily limits His power. If God cannot intervene to make or allow to happen something different, then He is not omnipotent, at least to my understanding of that word. The two abilities cannot coexist without limitation.

God’s omniscience does not limit his power. He has freely created us free to obey or disobey him. That is the power he has given us, and it is called free will.That is consistent with his power, that he can know what we are going to do before we know it and tolerate us anyway. Should God so decide against tolerance, he is also free to intervene and change what we plan to do by his intervention. There are two ways he can do this: by grace or by miracles.

As I pointed out at the start of this thread, I am interested not only in the omniscience of God, but in defining that omniscience to include knowledge of what we will do, but also knowledge of what we would have done had we not been prevented (by natural events or by god) from doing it.

 

[e_c]

Nixbits - The best “definition” of God that we can provide is “esse ipsum subsistens,” in English, “being itself subsisting.” More simply put, God is Being. Anything that is “in being” must be bound up with God, Who is Being. Does this help?

If, as you say, “There simply can’t be something that exists that God is not present to.” then His omnipresence necessarily limits His power. God cannot exclude his ‘presence’ from Hell (for example) even if He wanted to. So, again, He is not omnipotent in the way that I understand the term.

So if God withdraws His entire presence from something, He withdraws the source of its existence. That thing simply ceases to exist.

If God is aware of what is going to happen to me ten days from now, because to God’s awareness my future is part of His ‘now’ in some way, then God cannot have the power to change what will happen to me ten days from now. In other words, His omniscience necessarily limits His power. If God cannot intervene to make or allow to happen something different, then He is not omnipotent, at least to my understanding of that word. The two abilities cannot coexist without limitation.

The word “change” is the hinge here. There is no future to God, so there is nothing to “change.” God’s knowledge of creation must be understood in terms of His eternity. Once again, the PNC is at work. The only limits in God are in the PNC. It’s the same here… God can’t do what He has done in creation while also not having done what He has done in creation in the same sense. So this helps to answer this:

As I pointed out at the start of this thread, I am interested not only in the omniscience of God, but in defining that omniscience to include knowledge of what we will do, but also knowledge of what we would have done had we not been prevented (by natural events or by god) from doing it.

God looks at creation like we look at a map. Boethius has a great discussion of this in “The Consolation of Philosophy.”

 

[e_c]

In your mind it does, but that is because you STARTED with your God and then looked for arguments to support your belief. And those arguments, not being specific to your God, are then rendered useless.

…

You’ll end up in a mental shouting match. ‘No, this applies to MY God, not YOURS!’ You might win if you can shout the loudest.

BTW - This is the problem. My argument is not a Christian argument, it’s a natural one (and comes from Aristotle). Oh, yes, it happens to work for “my God,” because both are the truth!

I am very familiar with Hinduism, as a matter of fact. I’ve done my fair share of reading their stuff. Their issues start “on the ground,” with not engaging the natural world with integrity (so it is a problem of philosophy). That’s how you can end up with everyone being suns in jars of water… As Thomas points out, a small error in the beginning causes a great one in the end.

It’s pretty silly to say you know my background when you really don’t have a clue. So stop.

There is a truth, we can find it.

 

[FractalFire]

Sorry to drag attention back to post #36, but . . .

It’s okay, we don’t bite.

If God is aware of what is going to happen to me ten days from now, because to God’s awareness my future is part of His ‘now’ in some way, then God cannot have the power to change what will happen to me ten days from now. In other words, His omniscience necessarily limits His power. If God cannot intervene to make or allow to happen something different, then He is not omnipotent, at least to my understanding of that word. The two abilities cannot coexist without limitation.

Nope, not at all, mostly because you are misunderstanding how God works. God is not limited by being in time – he’s outside time, seeing all times, and (if he wills) acting in all times simultaneously. To borrow from C.S. Lewis, imagine that all time is a piece of paper, and God is standing outside the paper, looking down at it (yes, this metaphor requires space, but bear with me for a while, it’s just a metaphor). Your life is a line, moving along on the paper from left to right. It can move up and down (make choices), but not backwards. God see your entire line (“life”) simultaneously, the beginning and end, even though your present self (a point on the line) only sees the past and where you are now.

At any point in the time, when God wills, he can interfere, causing events to occur. Because of his perspective, he sees all your actions, all his actions, and all the results simultaneously – they are all happening at once (I.e. they all are on the paper and he sees the full picture). So his omnipotence and omniscience don’t and can’t contradict each other. God knows that result A will happen 10 days from now (from your perspective), but this is *taking into account *the events that he has (from his perspective) already ordained. So he knows the result and has had a role in determining the result. Does this make sense? If not, I suggest grabbing a copy of Mere Christianity and reading C.S. Lewis’ explanations about God. They are very straightforward and clearly laid out for laymen like us.

 

[Bradski]

BTW - This is the problem. My argument is not a Christian argument, it’s a natural one (and comes from Aristotle). Oh, yes, it happens to work for “my God,” because both are the truth!

That’s not correct. It happens to work for ‘your God’ whether He exists or not. It works for all concepts of a creator you can possibly imagine. It is therefore useless as an argument for God.

You should tell others.

 

[FractalFire]

That’s not correct. It happens to work for ‘your God’ whether He exists or not. It works for all concepts of a creator you can possibly imagine. It is therefore useless as an argument for God.

You should tell others.

Don’t be silly. It only works for a monotheistic God, not any entities like Zeus, Athena, etc. You seriously need to read more philosophy if you think it works for any God.

Furthermore, it isn’t like Christians stop here. We use this to prove the existence of a God, then argue further about what God is like and has done. This ought to be obvious if you have read any Christian arguments.

 

[Solmyr]

That assertion is completely baseless and unsupported, so I wholehearted reject it.

Exactly. My explanation is God, because I think it the most reasonable one. Your explanation is the universe, but I don’t think you’ve done a good job defending that concept.

Just like I reject yours. So, what now? Of course positing God as “explanation” leads nowhere. The whole argument just collapses into: “God said let there be light… and there was light”. Is that an “explanation”?

Actually, it is. It’s called the argument from contingency, and has been expounded by thinkers since Aquinas (and maybe before). Here’s Craig again explaining it:

Yes, I am aware of the 5 ways or Aquinas, or the 20 ways of Kreeft, and the whole caboodle all the way until someone argues that the beauty of Bach’s music is a proof for God’s existence. (I am not kidding. There are people who suggest this seriously.) All of them are based on unsupported metaphysical assumptions or have not logical fallacy in them. But I will only concentrate of what you quoted from Craig.

"So what reason might be offered for thinking that premise 1 * is true? Well, when you reflect on it, premise 1 has a sort of self-evidence about it. Imagine that you’re hiking through the woods one day and you come across a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If one of your hiking partners said to you, “It just exists inexplicably. Don’t worry about it!”, you’d either think that he was crazy or figure that he just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the suggestion that the ball existed there with literally no explanation.

Now suppose you increase the size of the ball in this story so that it’s the size of a car. That wouldn’t do anything to satisfy or remove the demand for an explanation. Suppose it were the size of a house. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of a continent or a planet. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of the entire universe. Same problem. Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to affect the need of an explanation."*
This little excerpt shows that Craig in not much of a philosopher. He commits some very fundamental errors. First he disregards the fact that quantitative changes frequently result in qualitatively significant results. (A pile of U235 may be inert, but making the pile twice as large will result in a huge explosion.) Next, his analogy is way off the mark. No materialist tries to argue that we can just walk around in the “nothingness” and stumble upon the universe.

The universe in not an object, it is a collection of objects. And it is a very elementary fallacy to try and extrapolate the attributes of the objects to the whole set.
FractalFire;13610153:

And you know this how?

You overlooked the disclaimer. There is no reason to assume that the quarks, or leptons or atoms… COULD be different from what they are. Empty speculations are just that… empty.

By the way, if one of these attempts to establish the “god” of philosophy would actually succeed, it would not establish the existence of the “Christian God”, only a faceless deistic entity. It would be much better to stick with “faith”.

 

[e_c]

It happens to work for ‘your God’ whether He exists or not. It works for all concepts of a creator you can possibly imagine.

So you think it works…? If you think it works then there’s no “whether or not.”

We come back to this great principle: God is not a being. Zeus is a being (or would be). Other “gods” are beings.

When we talk about monotheism, we are claiming “ownership” over the ONE GOD. All monotheistic religions are about that same God. YHWH, the Trinity, Allah, Ahura Mazda, Cao Dai, whatever, are ALL CLAIMS ABOUT THE SAME GOD.

The Dharmic religions are a little harder to call simply monotheistic, but you could put them there too.

Once the cosmological argument (or another basic one) is understood, it is self-evident. It also breaks open the centrality and primacy of God in understanding the created world (especially in terms of purpose, which unfolds into the natural law, giving us an in-built morality).

 

[e_c]

This little excerpt shows that Craig in not much of a philosopher. He commits some very fundamental errors. First he disregards the fact that quantitative changes frequently result in qualitatively significant results. (A pile of U235 may be inert, but making the pile twice as large will result in a huge explosion.) Next, his analogy is way off the mark. No materialist tries to argue that we can just walk around in the “nothingness” and stumble upon the universe.

…

The universe in not an object, it is a collection of objects. And it is a very elementary fallacy to try and extrapolate the attributes of the objects to the whole set.

…

By the way, if one of these attempts to establish the “god” of philosophy would actually succeed, it would not establish the existence of the “Christian God”, only a faceless deistic entity. It would be much better to stick with “faith”.

I suggest reading some of Dr. Ed Feser’s writings on the 5 ways. You have some really common misunderstandings of this stuff.

 

[Solmyr]

I suggest reading some of Dr. Ed Feser’s writings on the 5 ways. You have some really common misunderstandings of this stuff.

I did. He is just as incorrect as the rest. I am already accustomed to be accused of “misunderstanding” if I don’t accept something. Not conducive to mutual understanding.

If you wish to have a conversation, you can pick any one of those arguments, state them with your own words, and we can talk about it. I am not interested in third party quotes. There is no way to argue or clarify something if the other party is not present. Use your own words, and if there is a need for clarification, I will ask, and you can do the same.

I am game. Your choice.

 

[FractalFire]

Just like I reject yours. So, what now? Of course positing God as “explanation” leads nowhere. The whole argument just collapses into: “God said let there be light… and there was light”. Is that an “explanation”?

At least I give good, logical reasons why I believe it, Solmyr. You’re the person who claims, with increasingly sketchy objections, that the universe “just exists” and throws around strawmen like this zinger – “The whole argument just collapses into: ‘God said let there be light… and there was light’” When did I ever say that? But no, when you can’t answer an objection, like most people you simply buckle down and keep on driving forward, completely incapable of being convince by any argument. I’m truly sorry you aren’t able to see that my argument is a lot more than that pitiful strawman – is a lot deeper and more profound, and I haven’t even laid out half of it. I cannot make you understand what you do not wish to comprehend, however much it saddens me.

Yes, I am aware of the 5 ways or Aquinas, or the 20 ways of Kreeft, and the whole caboodle all the way until someone argues that the beauty of Bach’s music is a proof for God’s existence. (I am not kidding. There are people who suggest this seriously.) All of them are based on unsupported metaphysical assumptions or have not logical fallacy in them. But I will only concentrate of what you quoted from Craig.

Oh really!? How wrong would I be to assume that you’ve never even read those list of arguments you mentioned – just glanced at them when someone gave you a link or perhaps merely picked up the terms from a conversation? Can you even name the arguments listed in them (without cheating and looking it up)? I seriously doubt you can, because if you could you would not accuse them of being full of logical fallacies and unsupported philosophical assumptions.

It’s not so simple as all that, my friend, and if the arguments were that easy to refute, they would have been rejected long ago. How easily you assume you know so much about what you refuse to comprehend! Even the silly argument from music that you mentioned is a half-hearted and poorly phrased attempt to attack an atheist with a very real philosophical problem – the problem of beauty, and whether or not, by the atheist metaphysics, it exists at all. True, that particular argument is articulated stupidly and typically rubbish, but to suggest that such an argument is all that we, on the theistic side, possess merely shows me that those are probably the highest quality of arguments you have ever been exposed to.

This little excerpt shows that Craig in not much of a philosopher.

Once more, you apparently show an un-paralleled genius, a true savant in the making. For now, not only do you understand quantum physics while not being a physicist, you are now qualified to judge the quality of a philosopher based on having read a few quotes from him!

He commits some very fundamental errors.

…said lots of people who completely misinterpreted what the philosopher was saying and then went on to make some actual fundamental errors of their own.

First he disregards the fact that quantitative changes frequently result in qualitatively significant results. (A pile of U235 may be inert, but making the pile twice as large will result in a huge explosion.)

Oh look, a fundamental error!

I’m sorry to say that you completely missed the point. The quantity of matter in an atomic reaction matters – I’m studying chemistry and I do think I at least grasped that. But is it irrelevant to the question we are asking, which is whether it could be *any different *than it currently is (whether it is contingent or not). Why is your self-explaining universe mysteriously only self-explanatory in those portions of it that you have a sketchy understanding of? The ball on the ground is not an explanation for itself, or the water molecule an explanation for itself, but the mysterious parts of the universe you don’t really know much about – those things do explain themselves, obviously, and people who disagree just don’t understand the universe. Forgive my skepticism, but I think you can see why I don’t believe you.

You overlooked the disclaimer. There is no reason to assume that the quarks, or leptons or atoms… COULD be different from what they are. Empty speculations are just that… empty.

Based on all prior data (namely, everything else in the universe), we have no reason to assume that they have to be the way they are, so the burden of proof lies firmly on your end.

Secondly, what, then, do you propose of the cosmologists who suggest that there may be infinitely many universes, all with different fundamental constants (and hence, particles) – are they misinformed about the possibility of there being other particles and universes?

 

[FractalFire]

Part 2

By the way, if one of these attempts to establish the “god” of philosophy would actually succeed, it would not establish the existence of the “Christian God”, only a faceless deistic entity.

I *know *that, thank you, though the deity would be more monotheistic than deistic. Regardless, it has not established Christianity. But that’s because that’s not what I was trying to do. You are an atheist or agnostic, or at least, non-theist, correct? The existence of any God, even one who is not the Christian God, would be a big upheaval from your ordinary worldview. It seems odd then that you would complain. Of course I know of more specific arguments for people who believe in God, but not the Christian understanding of God (or even other arguments against atheism that do not mention omniscience). Since we are talking about omniscience, however, these are the relevant arguments.

You know you are winning an argument (or at least, not losing horribly) when your opponent comes back and says – but you haven’t proved unrelated point B, so there.

It would be much better to stick with “faith”.

Oh yes, wouldn’t atheists just LOVE that!? More uneducated theists who don’t bother to learn the arguments for their faith so atheists can pick on them.

Secondly, I *am *sticking to Faith – as the Bible, not atheists, understand it. This is Faith properly understood, grounded and supported in reason, argument, and warranted belief. I will not give in to some wishy-washy smaller faith-for-no-reason or faith-in-fun-spiritual-things just because an atheist can’t (or won’t) understand philosophy or because it will make things easier for them.

 

[e_c]

Amen to that!

This is my last post in this thread, not only because it’s off topic, becoming personal, and will probably be shut down soon anyway for those two reasons, but also because there’s not any progress forthcoming.

I highly recommend Dr. Feser. He’s got a REALLY nice blog, in addition to his books.

 

[FractalFire]

Amen to that!

This is my last post in this thread, not only because it’s off topic, becoming personal, and will probably be shut down soon anyway for those two reasons, but also because there’s not any progress forthcoming.

I highly recommend Dr. Feser. He’s got a REALLY nice blog, in addition to his books.

I like Feser a lot. He is brilliant and so far, I’ve just read his blog (I want to get one of his books, but they don’t have any at the library here, which is sad, because we have an entire wing devoted to philosophy). Do you read Maverick Philosopher too?

 

[Solmyr]

It’s not so simple as all that, my friend, and if the arguments were that easy to refute, they would have been rejected long ago.

They have been.

Secondly, what, then, do you propose of the cosmologists who suggest that there may be infinitely many universes, all with different fundamental constants (and hence, particles) – are they misinformed about the possibility of there being other particles and universes?

It is also empty speculation. I am an equal-opportunity denouncer of empty speculations.

Oh yes, wouldn’t atheists just LOVE that!? More uneducated theists who don’t bother to learn the arguments for their faith so atheists can pick on them.

If the existence of God could be established on fully rational grounds, as the catechism states, then there would be no need to have “faith” in God’s existence. Then it would be a fully rational proposition.

As I said before, pick your favorite - but fully rational - argument, state it with your OWN words, and let’s have fun. Fully rational means: no appeal to faith, no appeal to revelation. As it was said in Dragnet: “just the facts, Ma’am”. (Or Sir, as the case may be.)